


we're a story (unfinished, it's true)

by biggrstaffbunch



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Mid-Credits Scene, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 09:27:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6950659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggrstaffbunch/pseuds/biggrstaffbunch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky and Steve, in Siberia and after. Brief moments between them, as the world falls apart and comes back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we're a story (unfinished, it's true)

There’s blood on Steve’s face.  
  
Bucky’s own dislocated jaw is only now beginning to heal after being prodded into place, but through the haze of pain, a memory penetrates. It’s sharp, and sweet as a needle in the arm, sinking slowly into his consciousness, bringing strands of images and sounds to fore.  
  
Steve, with blood on his skin. Steve, bruises marring his furrowed brow and a thumb wiping at his dripping nose. It’s familiar. It’s—  
  
Bucky knows this in a way he hasn’t known much of anything, these past three days. These past two years. These past seven decades.  
  
He staggers when they get on the plane, still off-balance and curled inward by the white-hot pain of his arm being gone. He brings Steve down with him. For a moment, they’re kneeling together, snow behind and beyond them, the only sound their twinset of ragged breathing.  
  
Then, with shaking fingers, Bucky reaches out his good hand. Touches the scarlet spatter across Steve’s cheekbone, smoothes the flesh underneath, watches as Steve’s eyelashes flutter shut and the muscle in his jaw goes taut.  
  
“Bucky,” he says.  
  
They were ten the first time Bucky stitched a wound up for Steve, clumsy and panicked, after a playground fight. He learned how to be gentle at the knobby knee of his best friend. Seventy years later, he knows how to inflict pain with all the expertise of a master. But even when he was shooting at Steve, stabbing him, punching him—there was a sickening lurch to his movements. A tug of war between his brain and his body.  
  
_You know me_ , Steve had said, high above the Potomac. And he’d been right. Even now, Bucky’s fingers drift over the planes of Steve’s face, charting the old slopes and angles, and it’s like he’s always done this, taken stock of the cuts and bruises, tried to stem the bleeding. It’s like he was never gone.  
  
“Let me,” Bucky asks.  
  
But he _was_ gone. It’s been years since he’s touched anyone with anything approaching kindness. He’s been gone for years, lost in his head, trapped and forced to do awful things. Sometimes, in Bucharest, when he looked in the mirror, all he saw was a pale outline of a dead man. Nothing more than an imprint.  
  
He used to write line after line in his notebook. _Who am I? What am I?_ Bucky knows what the world would say: _Monster. Man. Man turned monster. Soldier. Assassin. A memory._  
  
But Steve. Steve with the determination in the curl of his mouth. Steve with the lost look in the dark blue of his eyes. Steve with red smeared across his skin. Steve would say—Steve has said—  
  
_You’re my friend. He’s my friend._  
  
It’s what brings Bucky back to life. The word, the reminder, and the unchanged, ingrained picture of this mulish man and his bloody face and his stalwart, sometimes stupid faith in him.  
  
Whatever else he has been, as long as Steve Rogers is alive, he was and will be James Buchanan Barnes. Best friend. Brother.  
  
Worth fighting for.  
  
Bucky doesn’t know what will come next. He’s not sure how to live up to the sound of Steve’s shield falling to the ground, the finality of Steve’s sacrifice for him.  
  
Here, though. Now. Confronted with the same image he has always known, of Steve after a fight, battered and exhausted, needing some care. Of Steve, arm thrown over Bucky’s shoulder, needing a friend.  
  
This, Bucky can do. This, Bucky knows.  
  
“Let me,” Bucky says again, and gets to work.

 

|

 

“Should’ve kept the shield.”

At the controls, Steve’s shoulders stiffen. From his seat, Bucky can see the outline of them, broad and imposing. They make the nape of Steve’s neck, boyishly pink with a dusting of blonde hair, look strangely innocent. Something hurts in Bucky’s chest, a dull ache that he’s learned to identify as memory.

“Stark,” Bucky continues. “What he said. He was wrong. You shouldn’t have given it up.” The _for me_ hangs in the air, unspoken.

Steve’s voice is quiet when he says, “Nothing I wasn’t ready to give up.” The  _for you_ goes unspoken, too.

The clang when Steve dropped the shield on the ground is still echoing in Bucky’s head. It sounds like a scream. Just another casualty of this battle for Bucky’s immortal soul. He wants to shout at Steve not to bother, because he’s been damned to hell for awhile already. There’s no saving him. Not really. Not now.

The problem is, Steve’s the kind of guy who’s never met a long odd he didn’t like.

He’d done this before, Bucky remembers. On the Helicarrier. Tossed the shield aside, the vibranium clanging against metal before dropping into the water. He hadn’t even watched it fall. Just kept his eyes on Bucky’s, blood smeared bright red across his face. An impossible fight, and he was ready to fight it only on the strength of his own bare hands and beating heart.

“Stark was _wrong_ ,” Bucky says again, vehemently.

“Maybe he wasn’t,” Steve says. He turns half-around. “Lots of people have died, Buck. Too many, since I woke up. I hold that shield, and...I don’t know. Sometimes, it feels like the only thing I’m protecting is myself.”

Steve turns his chair more fully now, and in the dim glow of the Quinjet, his eyes are full of terrible grief.  “I’m not sorry for standing up for what I believe. But I am sorry about the cost.”

Bucky knows heroes. He thinks he might have been one, once. He reaches out, off-balance without the weight of his metal arm. His fingers curl around Steve’s knee.

“You saved the world, Steve.” He knows this would be true even if he didn’t spend the last year sitting in his flat in Bucharest, eating fruit from the market, watching the television for news report after news report of the Avengers and their do-gooding.

“I saved _you_ ,” Steve corrects. Bucky feels the cold wash of guilt creep over him again, the despair of knowing he’s not worth the waste Steve is laying to his life. Steve’s hand drops over his, warm and reassuring. “And I’d do it again. That’s the problem.”

He clears his throat and looks down. “You deserve to be saved. You didn’t do anything wrong, and I couldn’t stand to see you hunted down like you did. But I think I would’ve done all this even if...you didn’t deserve it. Because in the end, it’d still be—”

He doesn’t say _you_ , or _us_ , and the words join the other unsaid things in the atmosphere around them, thick with portent and meaning.

“I’m not objective when it comes to you,” Steve finishes. “I don’t think I ever was.”

Bucky arches an eyebrow. Slowly, deliberately, he turns his hand under Steve’s, interlaces their fingers. It’s been decades since he’s held anyone’s hand. It feels good. It feels safe.

“You’ve never been objective about anything in your life,” Bucky says. Steve looks so offended that for a moment, Bucky wants to laugh. “No, I mean it,” he continues, before Steve can interrupt. “That’s who you are. The skinny little shit that never knew when to cut and run. The guy who ignored orders to rescue a bunch of POWs in some godforsaken corner of Italy. A stubborn man. A loyal man. That’s the man Howard Stark gave the shield to. Not Captain America. Steve Rogers. That’s you. That’s enough.”

Bucky leans back, a little tired from the force he’s put behind his speech. “Possibly, I’m not real objective when it comes to you either,” he admits.

Steve’s expression is weary, but there’s a sense of soft bemusement to the line between his brows.

“Well. Good thing we’ve got each other, then.”

He squeezes Bucky’s hand, and for a moment, they just look at each other, the hum of the Quinjet all around them, the navigation charting a course to Wakanda and an uncertain future.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Good thing.”

 

|

 

“In Bucharest. You settled down. Stopped running.”

Steve’s voice, loud in the quiet that's built up, is hoarse. There’s no accusation in it, but Bucky feels the shame thrill through him anyway.

“Wanted to try it on for size,” he says. “Living a life. Just for awhile. I know I still gotta be punished.”

Steve puts the jet on autopilot and turns around. It’s funny; his arm should look empty without the shield, but he still carries himself defensively, like he could protect Bucky by the sheer size of him. There’s a tickle at the back of Bucky’s mind that guesses Steve did that when he was a scrawny little thing, too.

“You don’t need to be punished, Buck. You need to be _helped_.”

“I need to atone.” Bucky feels a grim sort of humor as he thinks about church, and rosary beads, and the way religion is always about sin and absolution, never about faith.

“You need to live a life in order to do that.”

Steve, though. Steve’s a religion all on his own. Enduring conviction. Boundless belief. When Bucky was chained up on that table in Azzano, when he opened his eyes and saw Steve haloed by strange green light, his name on Bucky’s lips was a prayer. Then and now.

_Let me keep him. Amen._

“What kind of life?” Bucky asks. The oceans and the earth pass below them in a blur. “The words are still in my head. All you gotta do is say ‘em and I’m hollowed clean out. A vessel.”

He leans forward, head bowed over his knees. “Gimme a mission,” he says, “Any mission. Presidents. Ambassadors. Scientists. Kids in their fucking beds, two shots, clean kill. Hell. Those were best case scenarios. Sometimes, I had to make it last for days.”

There are gaps even now, but there’s no mercy in the fact that he’s kept every single memory HYDRA ever gave him.

“I don’t know what I am,” Bucky says. “But I know what I’m not.” _Deserving_. Another unspoken word. Too many in this jet, and between him and Steve. A century’s worth.

Steve walks forward. One step, then another. Slowly, slowly, he crouches, until he’s kneeling in front of Bucky like a supplicant.

“Dead,” Steve answers. “You’re not dead, and thank Christ for that.”

It’s blasphemy, Bucky thinks distantly, the passion in Steve’s voice when he invokes a higher power in Bucky’s name, when he thanks the universe for saving someone not meant to be saved.

Still. He’s helpless to the pull of Steve’s blinding, shining loyalty. Drawn to the promise of redemption, the idea that he was good once, with this man by his side, and maybe he can be good again, if only he could—

_Let me keep him, please._

He cuffs Steve gently in the side of the head, overwhelmed suddenly by that old burst of desperate yearning, the ache of longing that was once burned clear out of him but then kindled awake again with every minute after the Helicarriers fell. He wants to be part of the world. He doesn’t want to be a story whispered in the dark.

“Thank _you_ ,” he corrects Steve, voice rasping. “You stubborn ass.” His fingers sift through Steve’s hair, a slow drift. “Never could leave well enough alone. Should’ve left me to face the music.”

“Bucky,” and the way Steve says his name, like it’s home, like it’s his _own_. His eyes fall shut.

It lights a flame under the skin of Bucky’s throat and chest, a blush spreading hot. Steve’s mouth around his name, it’s the sound that blots out all others. The trigger that unleashes the man he used to be, rather than the weapon he became.

“You don’t belong to them,” Steve says, and he opens his eyes, the blue of them electric and fierce. “I’ve belonged to too many goddamned people since I woke up from the ice. I wasn’t going to let them take you, too.” He grabs the front of Bucky’s vest, brings him down. “You hear me?”

He’s nose to nose with Bucky, breath warm. “You belong to _yourself_.”

 _I belong to you_ , is what Bucky doesn’t say, but what he broadcasts with his hand over Steve’s, clutching at them like a lifeline. _Isn’t that right? Isn’t that why you can’t leave me behind? Isn’t that why I stopped running?_

There are no answers.

They simply sit like that, two shadows curled into one another, in the silence.

 

|

 

The King of Wakanda is a good man.

When they’d stood in the snow, battered and uncertain, His Highness had offered his country as haven. Clear-eyed and forthright, he had explained his hunt was over, and he knew Bucky to be innocent of this crime. And to offer peace where possible, at the end of this chaos, he had given Steve leave to fly the Quinjet over the borders into Wakanda.

Now, Bucky and Steve stand in the middle of a lush Wakandan forest, a place even HYDRA operatives have never seen, and there’s a wonder at the burden and honor that must sit on T’Challa’s shoulders.

He and Steve are alike, in some ways, Bucky thinks, watching the way they talk in lowered voices. Both of them relentless. Both of them strong. Both of them charged to protect others, at great personal cost to themselves.

And both of them tired, but only in the ways that those dear to them can tell.

A woman with dark eyes and a commanding stature bows her head to T’Challa as they walk past, and it’s subtle, the way it’s not in deference but concern.

The power here is palpable. The strength, and willingness to defend a home, and loved ones, from a world that would corrupt what’s good.

Bucky thinks of the gun at his back, a long time ago, the systematic invasion of people’s homes and lives.

He used to be one of the things Wakanda defended against. A shiver runs through him. What is he now? A refugee? A fugitive? Or a ghost about to be laid to rest?

Steve, as if reading his thoughts, turns to Bucky. “You okay?” he asks. The fatigue is there in the twitch of his lips, the half second blink of his left eye before his right.

His Highness steps forward. “Come, Mr. Barnes. And you, Captain Rogers. Tomorrow will bring time enough for talk.”

Yes. That’s what Bucky is afraid of. The decisions he knows he has to make. The ones he’s not sure Steve will understand.

“Sure,” he says. “Tomorrow.”

They’re taken to an infirmary first, and stitched up, given state-of-the-art medical care. Bucky watches the sparking remainder of his arm as it’s cleaned and covered, taking in the clinical purity of the room. It reeks of healing, antibacterial liquids and soap, the warmth of skin. Nothing cold and dirty and utilitarian like the post-mission debriefs of yore. It’s what keeps Bucky still as he sits on the table, hand gripping Steve’s thigh, a long line of muscle against his own.

Hours later, when they’re exhausted and finally permitted to leave, the room they’re given is dark and cool, with flickering lanterns and soft bedding. Clothing, finely-woven and loose, is folded in ornate chairs. Toiletries and towels in the marble and stone bathroom. Running water and a razor.

Inviting. And overwhelming, a bit. The beauty of this place. The simple, almost incomprehensible joy of being here. Of being safe. Of being with Steve.

“Nice,” Bucky mutters, rakes a hand through his hair. “Kind of feels—like cheating.”

Steve, halfway through stepping out of his combat boots, frowns. “How long’s it been since you slept in a bed that wasn’t a mattress on the floor?” he asks. “Shit, Buck. Taking care of yourself isn’t cheating.”

He steps over, looking ridiculously vulnerable with his messy hair and bare feet. “It’s allowed,” he says, clapping a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. A squeeze, the press of his thumb into the aching muscles of Bucky’s neck, then down the curve of his shoulder, where the black sleeve rests. A groan escapes Bucky’s throat, makes his head fall forward.

Steve’s voice softens. “It’s deserved,” he says.

It’s been a very long day. Bucky feels time, the adrenaline high of days blurring into days, suddenly stop. Then, in a rush, every ounce of weariness and worry and grief seems to swamp him, sprung free by Steve’s benediction, unrelenting and unforgiving as it overloads his mind, weighs his body down. For a moment, he sways on his feet, unable to speak.

This time, Steve catches him before he falls.

 

|

 

“When’s the last time someone took care of _you_ , huh?” Bucky asks.

They’re sprawled across the bed, hours later. The moon is high in the sky, the only sounds in the night a mix of birdcall and tree leaves rustling. There’s about ten plates of demolished food stacked high on the bedside tables, and the feeling of being...satiated...of being _full_ —it’s new. Bucky rubs a hand over his stomach, feels renewed energy as the food works its magic. He turns to face Steve.

“Seriously,” he says. “Bet it’s been since 1933, at least.”

Steve snorts. “I don’t need taking care of,” he says, staring at the ceiling. Bucky thinks, incredulously, that he might even _believe_ that.

“Steve,” Bucky says. “You need more taking care of than maybe anyone I’ve ever met.”

The stinkeye he gets in return is a beautiful thing to behold. Bucky reaches out and musses up Steve’s hair, takes in the strong angles of his profile in the moonlight. The jaw, the nose, the brow. That chin. The mouth—

“Look,” Bucky says hastily, a strange tightness in his belly. “Way I see it, you gotta worry more about the people who don’t worry about themselves. The ones who’re used to goin’ at it alone. Even though they don’t have to be.”

His voice must be a little too pointed, because Steve faces Bucky then.

“Buck,” he says solemnly. “You think I don’t know I’m not alone? Sam and Wanda and Clint...Mr. Lang. Nat. Sharon. They did what they did because it was right, but also because they trust me. Because they’re…”

“Your people.”

Bucky thinks he remembers, vaguely, what it was like to feel part of something. Names like Dugan and Morita, they’re snippets, a few of many, but he knows that they were family, once.

Steve’s eyes are strangely intent. “Yeah,” he says. His hand reaches out, skims Bucky’s chest before settling over his heart, a decisive resting place. “My people.”

“Maybe they just take care of me by being there, Bucky,” he continues. “Because I don’t want anything else.” His hand is heavy on Bucky’s chest, the heat of it bleeding through the thin cloth of his shirt, sending shocks of awareness through Bucky’s body.

Bucky blows out a breath. “That a fact?” he asks, and he’s not sure when his voice got so husky. “You’re easy to please all of a sudden, Rogers.”

Steve laughs. It might be the first time Bucky’s heard that laugh, the low chuckle, sly and knowing, aimed at him. Ever. And in a life as long as his, it’s surprising that there are any firsts to be had at all.

“I’m a simple man, Barnes,” Steve says. “With simple needs.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow. “You’re a simple _something_ , alright,” he drawls, attempting an unimpressed mien.

Steve ignores him. Instead, he gets a thoughtful, calculating look on his face. “Bucky," he says, voice almost uncertain. "I ain’t a redhead with a cute smile and a mean right hook.”

Bucky feels his stomach swoop even as a swell of affection makes him grin. So that's how it is, huh? Good for Steve.  
  
“Well, pal," he says just as hesitantly, "I don’t got three dollars to blow, either.”

It’s their strange shorthand, as it ever was. _I’m not someone you ever did this with. I don’t have a thing to my name, not anymore._ Truth for truth. Bravery for bravery.

“Like hell that three dollars was yours in the first place,” Steve mutters, amused, and then he’s grabbing Bucky’s shirt, pulling Bucky to him, their bodies pressed close together, legs entangled, foreheads tipped together.

“Did we used to...do this?” Bucky asks. Some things are still fuzzy. He needs to know that it’s not just a whim, this buzzing under his skin. That Steve wants it, too.

Steve says, “No. Never got the chance.” His mouth tips up ruefully. “Didn’t get the chance to do a lot of things.” He closes his eyes. “Waited too long. Again. For a lot of things. I’m done with waiting, Buck.” His voice is soft, heartbreakingly young. “Can I be done? Can we just—have this?”

And this is Steve’s moment, his breaking point, when time stops and restarts, flooding around him, threatening to drown him, piling up with regrets and fears and shock and exhaustion until his face looks carved in stone, haunted and gaunt. He starts to tremble, imperceptibly, and Bucky winds his arm around his waist, pulls him closer still. For a man who has been so strong for so long, for someone who's opened his veins for Bucky, who's bared his soul even as the world found it wanting, who's fought and sacrificed and  _died_ for people who wouldn't let him be, this is a small respite. Almost nothing. Bucky wishes he had more to give than his body, his heat, his embrace as Steve slowly shakes apart.

A breath, and Bucky feels the brush of Steve’s mouth, electric hot, against his own.

“Yeah, Steve,” he says, and hopes he can make up for lost time, kiss after restless kiss. “We can have this.”

 

|

 

(Later, Bucky will watch Steve’s face again turn to stone as he makes the decision to freeze. He will make the hard choice because Steve can’t. Steve won’t. Because given the chance, he would still burn the world down for Bucky and call it protection. He’d fight and fight and fight, and a part of it would be for _himself_ , for the things that he’s had to go to war to keep. Steve ought to be able to rest. Bucky would like to rest, too. 

So he’ll go under. It’s okay. He knows his story isn’t over. He knows Steve’s story isn’t over, either. The two of them, they started this road a long time ago, and it’s not ending any time soon.

In fact, he thinks as he tilts back, the IV starting to do its job, this might just be another beginning.)

**Author's Note:**

> Shameless self indulgence. I'm sorry!! Find me at steverogersorbust.tumblr.com for more.


End file.
